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Friday, October 15, 2004

"Shields Up!"

It is an unfortunate fact that a base installation of any Windowsversion is riddled with security holes and while the fine folks atMicrosoft work day and night to patch various problems, it is seldomenough to keep your computer protected from the dangers that lurkonline. The following are some additions that can be installed on yourcomputer in order to offer some extra defence.

Javacool Software's ( http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/ ) "SpywareBlaster" may have a slightly goofy named, but it has proven to be one ofmy newest favourite system additions. Once installed, Spyware Blasterpatches over 3,000 known security holes in both Internet Explorer andMozilla/Firefox web browsers. Javacool is also continually updatingtheir database of known exploits, the free version of Spyware Blasterrequires manual updating, but for a small donation the program willautomatically update itself on a regular basis.

A common, but often misunderstood, security term heard on the Internettoday is "Firewall". This is due to the fact that Firewalls can takemany forms, including hardware and software, both of which serve thesame function of existing between your computer and the Internet inorder to protect your system against intrusion.

Hardware firewalls afford the best protection, but can also be expensiveand difficult to configure. Software firewalls are much more common, infact, Microsoft has included a firewall with Windows XP since ServicePack 1, which has gone through a major upgrade with Service Pack 2.However, as with many Microsoft products, the XP Firewall suffers froman overabundance of user friendless of the sort that can render Internetconnections non-functional with no apparent cause.

It's also apparent that most of the energy directed against breachingcomputer security will always be focused at the company that occupiesthe largest consumer base, which is, of course, Microsoft. This is whyit is sometimes considered preferable to use software from smallercomputer security firms, which makes Sygate's "Personal Firewall Pro" (http://www.sygate.com ) a perfect firewall choice. PFP does require abit of configuring when first installed, as it has to learn whichprograms are allowed Internet access. This configuration is verystraightforward, as PFP will ask you if individual programs are allowedaccess as they try to connect to the Internet. If you just launched orare familiar with the program that is trying to connect, you answer yes,if an unfamiliar program attempts to connect, then you can block itsaccess, until it can be confirmed as valid or as a malady.